Hello all, Firstly I would like to thank you all for sharing your
extensive knowledge, I learned more on here than I did at the
college I attended!
I have a question about magnetic polishers & scrap stainless steel
binding wire.
I wondered if I could finely chop bits of used stainless steel
binding wire, & introduce them into the magnetic polishing machine.
(which currently contains media resembling exactly that). I would
welcome your thoughts & input?
Diane Lee in Spring filled Yorkshire
Hi Diane,
The binding wire probably isn’t magnetic. Most stainless steels
aren’t. It also probably isn’t hardened. Polisher pins are.
In the short term, if you do have magnetic wire, it’d work, but it’d
bend and degrade pretty quickly.
The other issue is the ends of the wires. You’d have to cut it with
a shear to keep the ends from turning into claws that’d shred your
pieces rather than burnishing them. I’d be inclined to do a long
run with coarse abrasive in there with the pins first, to try to
polish the ends of the pins before it got anywhere near real
jewelry. I’d also do another long run with scraps of brass and
bronze in there to see how that comes out before trying it on real
stuff. If you get the finish you want after those steps, you’re
golden. But I wouldn’t bet much on it, or count on it if you’re on
deadline.
Put it this way: I can make my own pins, and I coughed up the
money to buy them. Just wasn’t worth the hassle.
Regards,
Brian
I wondered if I could finely chop bits of used stainless steel binding wire, & introduce them into the magnetic polishing machine.
(which currently contains media resembling exactly that). I would welcome your thoughts & input?
You could, of course, do it. How badly it would damage your work, I
can’t predict. It would not duplicate the existing shot in function.
The existing shot is made from carefully hardened wire bits, that are
then also polished. You can do that in such a tumbler by tumbling the
shot with an abrasive polishing agent, just as you’d polish metal on
a buff. Run the shot with some form of slightly agressive rouge or
fine tripoli or the like suited to stainless, and then you’d at least
get shot that wouldn’t scratch the heck out of your work (as it would
do if you just add clipped but unpolished wire bits. The shot needs
to act as little burnishers, so they need to be polished and smooth,
especially the ends. The next issue, though is how well it would work
compared to commercial shot. The stainless binding wire is annealed,
and dead soft, and generally an alloy that isn’t intended for
hardening. Burnishing shot is made from hardened steel. there’s a
very big difference in how well that works.
But there’s no reason you couldn’t try it. Especially if you’re
burnishing very soft metals (annealed silver, for example), it might
work reasonably well, for a bunch less money. So as an experiment,
cut up a bunch of the wire. Add water, burnishing soap of your
choice, and something like alumina polishing powder. You can find
that sort of polishing material sold for lapidary work. I shouldn’t
take a lot of the polish. Enough to turn the liquid a bit cloudy.
Run it for a few hours, and see if it looks about right. If so, rinse
off the polish, and try some test silver piece to see.
Or save yourself a bunch of time and buy the commercial polishing
shot. It’s not that cheap, but it’s no where near as costly as it
used to be when magnetic polishers were new and the shot had to be
imported from Europe…
Hello Diane,
Uh, No - don’t do that. The binding wire I use is at least 30 ga.
When cut up, the sharp ends would scratch and the tiny bits would
pack into tiny crevices. A nightmare!
Now, if the intent is to produce a finely scratched surface like
rubbing with a Brillo pad, a different media (ceramic) is a better
choice.
Judy in Kansas, where the wheat is looking desperate for rain.